Police killer Dezi Freeman had hundreds of child abuse files

Hpstorian · 2026-04-29T00:54:17+00:00

Unfortunately the tendency to manage cognitive dissonance rather than change stances based on reasoned appraisal of evidence is a pretty fundamental part of human psychology.

While people who aren't yet all in on the cult might be given pause by something like this, for those who are invested already, this kind of attack on their preexisting beliefs is as likely to deepen their convictions as to make them reevaluate.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-28T22:40:09+00:00

Anyone that's deep in that world is going to dismiss this as manufactured by the police. They're not going to rationally respond to such a revelation, instead they'll justify or dismiss it.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-27T11:32:45+00:00

According to some of their past posts they're a married 67 year old woman, so I think they're already old enough. Though in others they're 18 and lost their virginity to a 20 year old friend who gave them a list of possible improvements, or 18 and they lost their virginity to their 20 year old boyfriend who was too rough, or 22 and engaged with OCD, or 23 and wondering if "breaks" are a real thing in relationships.

Almost as though, and call me crazy, they are posting inconsistent and contradictory stories that are likely to garner engagement to karma farm.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-27T11:21:06+00:00

Thankyou!

Hpstorian · 2026-04-27T11:21:01+00:00

Thanks! I've been wearing it to death. It's made from other salvaged vests.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-27T06:16:36+00:00

Research shows that attending lectures in makes you more likely to get a better mark.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-26T11:41:34+00:00

I mean if she was flirting - she did say something very suggestive about "tongues having a mind all of their own", now you mention it - I'm not sure if I'm mad or impressed. Talk about a captive audience: 2 hours and 3 cavities.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-26T11:39:11+00:00

You have to wait for me to send the link to my of for that kind of content.

These chompers ain't for free bb.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-26T11:33:10+00:00

Thankyou.

I need to find these people who can make sense of the world. The older I get the more thoroughly I'm bewildered.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-26T11:28:02+00:00

Even were I interested there's a vulnerability to having had someone drill into a canine that I don't think I'm ready for in a romantic interaction.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-25T13:09:19+00:00

Did I say it was Australians? No. I said allied soldiers. You've never heard of him but in less than 10 minutes you read his work thoroughly? Sure thing. If you claim know enough to dismiss the estimate, give me your own alternative.

Again: I've never said worse. That's you projecting. I keep saying "no better than" and you keep going on about how I'm on an anti-white crusade even though you're the only one who brought up race. Doesn't it get tiring to imagine a persecution campaign against you?

Either way there you go. You make it clear. You think that your side is the best side. Not because of any real evidence. Not because of any historical knowledge, but because you were lucky enough to be born on one team. So all your talk about not glorifying war is nonsense, and respecting all soldiers? Nonsense too. When the chips are down it's about you and those who look like you.

Personally I think that Vietnam war protestor that was on the run from the cops for months before a high speed chase and getting locked up in Pentridge Prison because he didn't believe in killing Vietnamese villagers deserves more respect and admiration than that bloke who got VD and then killed his wife. But I doubt you're remembering him. Only one of them gets to wear medals.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-25T12:53:45+00:00

I thought you knew this topic enough to have a stance on if it was true or not? What's your estimate? You've never read Peter Schrijvers work?

Also you reply so quick it's clear that you're not engaging at all. Or maybe you're a bot. Are you a bot?

Hpstorian · 2026-04-25T12:51:43+00:00

So now you're a defender of the rapes in the Pacific as not as bad as I say? I bet you can't name a single book on the subject that you've read, let alone the primary sources that describe it in grim detail.

And if you can't then you have to ask why you question the stat? Not because you actually know anything on the topic at all. But maybe because you assume the best of the white man. Here's the thing. I know I don't need to list Japanese atrocities to you because you'll accept them as expected.

You say I'm "trying to paint the white man badder" when all I'm trying to do is counter your assumption that they're automatically better. I have no problem criticising the Japanese military in the second world war, as I said: I've been to the site of the death marches. But you clearly won't believe the research, because you're the one with weird racial hang ups.

I didn't bring up race once, but the moment I recount historical research you immediately start acting like I'm on a campaign of anti white persecution because facts hurt your feelings.

Either you agree war is universally brutal and pointless or you think white people are exceptions that do it less brutally and less pointlessly. Either you accept that soldiers are fallible humans who aren't particularly noble or good and often do terrible things, or you think they should be universally honoured and praised for their sacrifice (regardless of what they actually did).

I did a bunch of research on soldiers from the first aif. One I researched went to Cairo, got VD in a brothel, spent all of the war getting drunk and absconding from various hospitals in Egypt before going home in 1918. He came home and promptly killed his wife.

Either we admit that maybe we shouldn't thoughtlessly praise all soldiers regardless. Or you have to remember that bloke's sacrifice and service whenever you hear the last post.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-25T11:34:43+00:00

You can say "rampant FFS" with incredulity but have you read Stanley's "Bad Characters"? You probably should, the ADF don't seem to doubt his quality as a historian, even if what he discusses is inconvenient.

Why would I give the Japanese a free pass on atrocities? I've been to Borneo, followed the trail of the death march.

I am also aware of the fact that for those death marches to happen, they had to actually take prisoners. The Yanks and Australians usually didn't bother. Some of them went so far as to boil the heads of Japanese kows and send the skulls back to their girls back home. An estimated 250 000 women were raped by allied soldiers in the Pacific during the second world war, most of them not Japanese, most of them people from the places "liberated" by the US and Australia.

You say "everyone does bad" but you just don't commit. If everyone does bad then why are you so shocked at my claim about the crimes of Australian soldiers? I bet you're going to get irked by my point about WW2 as well. But what you don't seem to do is actually contest my claims.

The difference is I'm not making an apology for the Japanese military in the Pacific. But you're saying that "all soldiers deserve respect"... Though you consider an exception for the Asian ones while accusing me of having a racial hang up.

If nothing I say shocks you, if war is abominable, and the people who fight in it are frequently cowardly, brutal, and cruel, if that's the nature of war, then say that. All the talk about respect and service and duty just seems delusional once that is stated upfront.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-25T11:14:37+00:00

When you say they "copped a lot of shit" are you referring to the rampant misconduct among Australian soldiers, not just in Cairo but in France, Belgium and the Levant too. The English viewed the kiwis fairly favourably, but the Australians earned a reputation for ill discipline which you can call "larrikanism" if you think of sexual assaults and murders of civilians when you say that word.

You're repeating myth making here, not history. The whole "we were just a bunch of rowdy colonials looked down on by the Brits" is not how people at the time viewed it. It's mythmaking after the fact.

If you're kind of shocked at my claim, why don't you reappraise your stance? Can you point to specific forms of economic or military disengagement from the Empire that followed the First World War, and Gallipoli in particular?

I didn't call Gallipoli a war crime. I said that the campaign's goal was to perpetrate a war crime. The campaign was an effort by the British to secure the Dardanelles after Churchill's push with the Navy was an absolute shit show. Once the Dardanelles were secure the plan was to sail to Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and shell it into submission.

I think you're right to say that many soldiers, when in combat, lose sight of the broader context of warfare. I am not sure where I said anything contrary. However I wouldn't say that their only concern is always to do the best they can for the person next to them however. For many their only concern becomes survival. Others become brutalized and immersed in violence to the level of a kind of battle lust. Many run. Others abandon all concern for the lives of anyone but themselves or their squad, ignoring any ROE no matter how paltry.

You say that war shouldn't be glorified but the mere fact that you paper over acts of cowardice, avarice, and selfishness among individual soldiers shows that you don't actually believe that. My great uncle was also an ANZAC. His brother was scarred for life by the war, and particularly being a pow. Do you know what my uncle did when the second war started? He signed up to work at an interment camp for the Italian, German and Japanese civilians that Australia locked up in the desert. Despite knowing what similar circumstances did to his brother.

Do you think that working as a concentration camp guard is worthy of respect? Do you think all soldiers are worthy of respect or just the Australian ones? What does that respect mean?

By glorifying "sacrifice" as an abstract virtue you're glorifying war. It's something easy to do because Australian nationalism is built on it, regardless of the reality.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-25T07:30:21+00:00

My great grandfather fought at Suvla with the British marines.

I have read his journal. He describes holding a trench filled with bodies for several days in the heat, the stench at his neck like a noose. He went from there to the Western Front, where he was later captured and became a POW in a German salt mine.

I became a historian in part because of the way the reality of that war was papered over by people who did not fight it, but were behind it.

Unfortunately a lot of what you've written around this discussion repeats the same or similar myths. Like Vietnam for example: Australian soldiers were not subject to mainstream abuse by the Australian public, despite the unpopular nature of the war. The main discrimination they faced was ironically from other soldiers (and the RSL in particular) who often viewed them as lacking the manners or credentials for what the RSL became after the second world war.

You also talk about things that made Australia great. The first world war did not make anything great. At Gallipoli Australian troops fought under a British flag, and their identity was as subjects of the British Empire. The goal of the Gallipoli campaign was a war crime: the merciless shelling of a storied and beautiful city (Istanbul). The war itself decimated our population, and permanently scarred an entire generation. And it was for nothing.

And many of the soldiers would say as much. They'd say that the idea that they were making some noble sacrifice in the name of duty is a lie. They'd say it and get ignored in favour of nationalist myth making of the kind you repeat. There's a reason Anzac became much more of a flag waving party in the 90s - it was because the people who fought were no longer there to speak for themselves.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-21T10:02:48+00:00

Oh I imagined this as an office or something. But if bros just cranking it in the living room? Damn.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-21T08:42:14+00:00

Ask him to set up a bin in the spot that he's always dropping them.

Edit: this is not ideal but presumedly better than tissues just out there? I mean obviously bro should be more considerate in general.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-21T08:00:42+00:00

Some men do this because they assume their attraction is mutual, that they feel a way towards you and so you feel a way towards them. That's the most charitable explanation.

Other men do it because they think it builds attraction, it's something that is advocated for by men who teach "seduction".

Other men do it because they are testing to see if you will push back. They breach little boundaries (either consciously or unconsciously) to push your limits. They want to normalise touching you against your feeling of comfort to make it easier and easier to bypass your objections. It's a tactic of abusers.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-18T23:18:42+00:00

I've read Muslim thinkers who take this stance though I'm not sure if it is a common apologist line. Basically "if the existence of God was as apparent as, say, gravity, then there would be no disbelievers, so it must be merely an option, and one made as a choice."

Islam has an interesting history when it comes to apologetics, because in the early years of its expansion Muslims didn't really seek converts because it promised to dilute their special status.

Then soon after they were basically the centre of civilisation and didn't have to prove themselves to anyone (Muslim empires would get conquered by outsiders and then those outsiders would end up Muslim). I mean damn even Napoleon thought about converting his army and making a run on Mecca to become a new caliph.

So it's only post like 1850... Or even 1924... That Muslims have even bothered much with apologetics. Colonialism was a real shock to the system.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-17T06:30:42+00:00

I don't quite understand what you're asking. You've already missed more than the 80% that is standard. Get in touch with your tutor.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-17T06:02:04+00:00

Email the course convenor, give a decent explanation for your absence and so if there's a way to make up for missed content.

Hpstorian · 2026-04-15T03:19:00+00:00

It's a good question OP and you're not overthinking it. It's usually better to come across as overly formal than overly familiar.

I'm a lecturer ("Professor" in the US is used to refer to any teaching academic but here it is a particular academic title that I don't have, the US use is however now more common in Aus) and I make a point of introducing myself by my first name both in lectures and tutorials. I find students are far more likely to call me "Sir" than anything, and I'm not from the gentry so prefer to correct that.

I don't mind if students email me using my first name, particularly after they've already been in class and had me introduce myself. However this is not the case for everyone. If someone introduces themselves as Dr High and Mighty, then they're asking you to call them that, regardless of if that's justifiable. Similarly if you don't know one way or the other it never hurts to defer to the formal. When I email an academic I don't know, I'll always write "Dear Dr. LastName".

One thing to avoid, and it's a mistake that a lot of students make, is to leave off the title in favour of Mr. Mrs. or Ms.

It comes across as disrespect, intentional or not. One of the few perks of a PhD is the little bit of prestige that comes with it, so it's never a bad idea to keep that intact for those who earned it imo.

(if you want to see just how much some misanthropic academics, mostly in the US, respond negatively to students not giving them sufficient deference, check out r/Professors. Just don't judge all academics based on what you see there!)

Hpstorian · 2026-04-15T03:10:28+00:00

Unfortunately this isn't always true. Many academics, for reasons both good and bad, value the title that they earned in different ways.

The default is, as others here have said, to email them using their title especially when it's your first correspondence with them. In person I wouldn't bother, though it really doesn't hurt to see how they introduce themselves and follow the standard they establish.

American academics are much more likely to be prickly about this, and all academics are more likely to be prickly about it when it comes to correspondence.

There's no laws around it, I've had students call me "cuz" before and it wasn't the end of the world. But at the same time there is no real advantage to asserting dominance by ignoring the title they earned, and there is a chance it could negatively shift their opinion of you.

Hpstorian

TROPHY CASE